Failure is less attributable to either insufficiency of means or impatience of labours than to a confused understanding of the thing actually to be done.

Value is the life-giving power of anything; cost, the quantity of labour required to produce it; its price, the quantity of labourwhich its possessor will take in exchange for it.

The principle of all successful effort is to try to do not what is absolutely the best, but what is easily within our power, and suited for our temperament and condition.

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.

You cannot get anything out of nature or from God by gambling; only out of your neighbor.

You will never love art well until you love what she mirrors better.

The question is not what man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate.